


(You're My) Starlight, Star Bright

by astraldefender



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Relationships, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hunk & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Hunk is the RA and an angel, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance is a lush but he's trying his best, Lance is oblivious and Pidge is in love, MENSA Pidge, Minor Lance/Nyma (Voltron), Pidge is a genius what else is new, Pining, any excuse to water my Plance y'all, can you find all of my stupid nods to canon, is is mutual?? maybe, it's college so of course there's drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 09:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16216001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraldefender/pseuds/astraldefender
Summary: It’s been seven months since she’d last seen Lance without a computer screen between them, so the extra set of hands he offers is just a bonus when staring down the three flights of stairs to her dorm room. College Lance was...different, in a refreshing way. He seemed more at ease here, hair grown out enough that the ends were starting to curl the way they had in his baby photos and complexion glowing from the long summer months, holding on to the box Katie had fought to lift just from the trunk into her arms like it was nothing. He was smiling, eyes full of mirth as he squinted through the midday sun, and Katie realized that for once in her life she made a gross miscalculation.Things Katie Holt excels at, abridged: calculus, theoretical physics, JavaScript and Objective-C, tetris when the screen is more than half full, pouring a perfect milk-to-cereal ratio.A list of things Katie Holt wishes she excelled less at: having a big, stupid crush on her best friend.Great.





	(You're My) Starlight, Star Bright

**Author's Note:**

> This was a piece I wrote for a zine that unfortunately got cancelled, but I had such a blast writing it! I really love Pidge and Lance and writing them together for the first time was such a funny experience that I can't wait to do it again.

Katie is four years old when she knocks her father’s briefcase off the counter, bright eyes marveling at all of the buttons on the graphing calculator that falls out. By then she’d been reading for a year and a half, and when her fifth birthday comes around her father’s colleagues are already talking about MENSA. Before the next even has the chance to show on the horizon Katie is elbows deep in robotics circuitry she’d picked out as a gift after being accepted, high school diploma in hand before she even hits double digits.

Their move to a humid nobody town on the eastern coast of Florida the summer after she turns twelve is as much for Katie as it is for her father’s new position at NASA’s Kennedy Center. Two of Samuel’s coworkers are MENSA members as well, and they act as Katie’s mentors for the next two years until she begins high school.

_Again._

The downside of being a child genius, it would seem, is your brain gets so wrapped up in pushing its limits that you don’t learn how to be an effective member of public society. The conditional agreement Katie strikes up with her mother means pursuing her masters in engineering once she’s done playing normal high school student for the day. It seems like a fair trade until she actually has to _interact_ with other students her age, and is almost positive she can feel her brain liquefying and dripping straight out from her ears by the end of first period. She ends up in detention within the first week for arguing with her statistics teacher on the practicality of his teaching methods.

If Katie were lucky she could maybe get away with burying her face into the systems analysis she had due in another week until the hour had passed.  

If. _Big_ if.

Katie Holt is _not_ lucky.

Thirteen minutes into publicly sanctioned hell the sound of metal screeching across linoleum shakes her from the tunnel line of vision she’d set on a notebook half full of calculations as someone sits down next to her.

_Right_ next to her.

“Mr. McClain, you’re well acquainted with the rules. Pick another seat.”

McClain, Katie assumes, leans back in his chair and throws a smirk back at the supervising teacher.

“C’mon, Harris. Holt here and I are in the same Stats class and if I don’t get her help on my homework I’ll just be back tomorrow.”

Katie pinches the bridge of her nose as Harris concedes, mumbling into whatever poor student’s paperwork he’s smothering with red pen marks. It’s several beats after McClain turns back toward the tabletop that Katie realizes he hasn’t actually said a single word to her, let alone asked for help with whatever Iverson had assigned after kicking her out of the classroom.

“So are you gonna ask for help or not?”

“Hmm?” McClain lifts his head up from where it was resting in his palm and Katie catches a glimpse of white headphone cording snaking down the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Nah, I was just messing with Harris. Asshole underscored me on my chemistry final last year so I took it over his head. Dude totally hates my guts now, kinda surprised he still has a job, honestly.”

“So _why_ are you sitting next to me then? Are you even _in_ my Stats class?”

“Believe it or not, Holt, there’s 23 other people in our Stats class who aren’t you and me. You’d notice that if you looked farther than the whiteboard. Anyway, I’m here because I wanted to give you daps for pulling that stunt on Iverson. Dude’s got a huge ego and deserves to have it taken down a few notches, bonus points for it being by a freshman.”

“What the hell is a dap?”

“It’s a fist bump, small fry. Try and keep up with the stuff that isn’t calculations, all right?”

“So...what then, you say something after I left? Why are you here?”

“Me? God no, I don’t have a death wish. I don’t even have detention, not today anyway, Harris just never questions me being here and I saw you when I was walking by. So, officially, name’s Lance. Junior class hall pass dealer, one hit Vine wonder.”

So maybe she’s not good at making friends her age, but there’s something to be said about not needing to meet someone’s expectations before even getting to introduce herself for once. It’s nice.

“Katie Holt. So what’s the deal with the hall passes?”

* * *

 It’s been seven months since she’d last seen Lance without a computer screen between them, so the extra set of hands he offers is just a bonus when staring down the three flights of stairs to her dorm room. Katie had stayed the course after Lance had graduated and finished her four years of high school like she’d promised her mother. In the two years between their graduations she’d finished her engineering degree and pushed forward with the next, putting her in the third year of graduate studies in astronautic engineering.

“You find your roost then, Pidge?” It had taken Lance all of 3 seconds to hear her father’s loving (see: embarrassing) nickname for her and run. The awful bird puns had never stopped. She can’t see more than the hat he’s wearing over the box in her arms, but can hear the clattering of keys and the harsh smacking of flip flops as he jogged toward her. “Easy there, small fry. I got it.”

“I can carry it myself, you know.”

She tried to sound annoyed, really she did, but to be fair it _was_ one of the heavier boxes she’d packed.

“Listen I’m sure you could give half the losers on frat row a run for their money, but I’m here to help. So let me, ok?” Katie feels the shift in her equilibrium as Lance lifts the box from her arms, blood rushing past the points in her arms where it had laid the heaviest. “So which one is yours?”

It’s the first good look at him she’d gotten since Christmas, and even then he’d been so busy with his family they’d barely gotten a moment together. It was all formal pleasantries and holiday dinner and stuffy clothes neither of them actually liked. College Lance was...different, in a refreshing way. He seemed more at ease here, hair grown out enough that the ends were starting to curl the way they had in his baby photos and complexion glowing from the long summer months, holding on to the box Katie had fought to lift just from the trunk into her arms like it was nothing. He was smiling, eyes full of mirth as he squinted through the midday sun, and Katie realized that for once in her life she made a gross miscalculation.  
Things Katie Holt excels at, abridged: calculus, theoretical physics, JavaScript and Objective-C, Tetris when the screen is more than half full, pouring a perfect milk-to-cereal ratio.

A list of things Katie Holt wishes she excelled _less_ at: having a big, stupid crush on her best friend.

_Great_.

* * *

The thing about being friends with Lance McClain is eventually, assuming you have the patience of a saint, get used to the extremes of his personality. Lance is boisterous, almost unforgivably so, with an ironic leaning toward self-deprecation and a flirting streak a mile long. He’s charming when he wants to be, but only when it’s actually earnest which _usually_ ends in him making a fool of himself with a bad pick-up line and a truly unfortunate waggling of his eyebrows.

_Usually_ ends.

The newest thing about Lance McClain, Katie learns, is that somewhere between

Cape Canaveral and Gainesville and over the last two years, not only had he actually become a decent flirt, but people were _eating it up_. It was easy enough to ignore at first, after so many years of watching his attempts fall flat she supposed _someone_ had to be interested eventually. It’s different now though, and she learns that all too quickly, sees it in coy smiles across the library and overzealous waves from the other side of the Quad. It’s the worst when they actually have the nerve to come up and talk to him, especially while Katie is already in the _middle of a conversation with him._

Said offending party this time is a sophomore who would probably smother Lance if she leaned just an inch further over the table.

“Hey sharpshooter~ a few of us are heading over to Vrepit Sal’s for a--” her eyes trail lazily over to Katie’s, “-- _small_ get together. You coming?”

“I mean, I’m kind of in the middle of something right now Nyma.” Katie watches the tinge of red that dusts Lance’s ears as a manicured hand comes to rest on top of his own. “Um, how long are you guys gonna be there? We shouldn’t be much longer, right Katie?”

The question comes out pathetically strangled, and Katie is already shoving her things back into her bag.

“No, I’m done here, so go off and do whatever.”

“ _Perfect._ ”

Katie wants to rip that _stupid_ lacquered smile off Nyma’s face and kick her right in back of her _stupid_ toned legs. What’s a single person need legs that long for anyway? Stupid.

“Seriously? You don’t want to come or anything?”

Katie doesn’t even need to look to see the pinch of annoyance between Nyma’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows.

“It’s fine, I’ve got some coding I wanted to work on so you and--Nina? I’m sure you two will have fun without me.”

It’s hard to ignore the hackles that raise at Nyma’s pathetically transparent giggle, harder still to look past the way their hands stay clasped together as she drags Lance out of the library. Katie spends the next several hours grumbling at an automation script and with her music turned up loud enough the RA, Hunk, has to tell her to turn it down or call it a night.

“Would _you_ want to hand-code a state of the art life support system designed for long term space travel?”

“Headphones then, Pidge, and make sure you eat something? Lance likes to complain about it when you go all ‘tunnel vision’ on him. Acts like a victim and then steals my food.”

_That_ catches her attention.

Katie pushes back from her desk and swivels around, eyes narrowed and a pout to match how her arms cross against her chest.

“You still got that peach cobbler?”

“So it was _you_ who snuck a piece!”

“Is that a _yes_ then? I’m a busy woman, Hunk. The galaxy can only wait so long.”

“Yeah all right, c’mon. But you didn’t see where I keep the stash, all right? Strictly need to know.”

Pidge snorts.

“More like need to know who’s raiding your snack stash.”

“Like I said, Pidge. _Need to know_.”

Katie doubts there’s enough science in the world to explain how Hunk’s cobbler can still be so crisp and buttery days later, but maybe someday she’ll try and figure it out. Until then she goes back to her laptop, headphones jammed straight into her ear canal until a text notification pops up in the corner of the screen.

 

**[McLance] 11:53 pm : i think we’re dating now?**

 

She turns her phone off.

“Idiot.”

* * *

_I think_ turns out to be an understatement, and Katie can’t remember the last time she got to spend time with Lance without him mentioning Nyma. Months, probably.

Nyma scored two goals in the soccer game last weekend.

Nyma is organizing a charity event for her sorority,

Nyma does the _best_ cover of Taylor Swift at karaoke.

Nyma, Nyma, _Nyma_.

“God, Lance. Could you maybe talk about something other than your girlfriend for once?”

Lance barely gets to mumble a meek ‘what’ before the sting hits Katie’s patience again.

“Yeah like, I don’t know, the movie we literally _just_ saw and had been waiting _actual_ months for? Or the new downloadable content for Blades of Marmora? Oh wait, that’s right! You talked during the _entire_ play through last week, _about Nyma_!”

“Pidge, I--”

“My name’s _not_ Pidge, Lance! You’re like some...lovesick _zombie_ whenever we hang out now, you sure act like there’s not a functional freaking brain up there sometimes.”

Katie fishes her wallet out of her bag and throws a few bills down on the worn diner table.

“Wait, Pidge I drove how’re you gonna--”

“I’ll take the bus.”

* * *

It’s nearing the end of the academic year and Katie hasn’t spoken to Lance in months. Was she being petty? Sure, but at least she’s self aware enough to recognize that. Was Lance self aware enough to recognize that he’d messed up? No.

Lance is an idiot.

An idiot who’s tanked on the front lawn of Beta Theta Pi, apparently.

“Hunk have you _seen_ yourself? You could carry him like a sack of potatoes, what help am I gonna be.”

Katie has her phone wedged between her ear and shoulder as she’s swapping connections in the shell of her latest robotics project. Stupid thing keeps running into her door.

“ _He keeps pulling the whole dead fish thing every time I try and lift him up. I’m kind of impressed, honestly.”_

“So sober him up and kick him to the curb.”

“ _He keeps mumbling about stuff I don’t understand, but he’s asking for you, Pidge.”_

The thing about being friends with Lance McClain is eventually, even when he’s been a complete moron, you learn to forgive the extremes of his personality. He’s slumped against a tree in the front yard of the frat by the time Katie gets there, but he’s in one piece. Worse for wear, but in one piece.

“Thanks, Hunk. I’ll take care of him from here.”

“Oh thank god. I’m just glad he didn’t hurl, you know? I’m kind of a sympathetic vomiter and--”

“Hunk?”

“Yeah, Pidge?”

“Go home, you lug.”

Hunk scurries off after crushing her in a hug that lifts her clean off the ground and muttering something quick about putting a pan of his loaded baked mac and cheese in the oven. Katie’s pretty sure the other students in the Montgomery dorms will never appreciate how good they have it with Hunk.

“Hey Sharpshooter, you have a rough game of beer pong?”

Lance shirks her off.

“You’re gonna have to speak up, dude.”

“Said I wn’t--risk my ti..title like that.”

“So what, you shooting shots instead? Let’s get you to bed, idiot.”

“She...Nymmma...”

“I don’t care about your stupid girlfriend, Lance it’s time to--”

“She’s not m’girlfrien’nymore.”

“Oh. Sorry about that.” Katie uncaps the water bottle Hunk had left her with and holds it us to Lance’s mouth. “Think you could drink some of this for me?”

It’s several minutes of watching him nurse back tiny sips before Lance shifts to lean back against the rough bark of the tree. It’s left indents on his cheek.

“Hey Katie? Could I ‘ave a hug?”

It’s almost disconcerting, the way her name sounds when he says it, but she lets Lance collapse forward and runs a hand down the back of his neck, picking stray blades of grass from his hair as she goes.

“You think you could make it to the Quad? We don’t have to go back yet, but maybe we should get you out of here. That sound ok?”

“Mm-okay, Katie. Jus’gotta..giddup we go!”

Lance’s center of gravity is questionable at best, but Katie counts her blessings for not needing to actually haul him off of the ground.

“Just um, please stop calling me that. Okay?”

“But’s your name? Told me to--said t’not call you Pidge.”

“I know I did, but it’s weird? Gimme your arm, moron, hold on to my shoulder.”

What should have been a five minute walk ended up being closer to fifteen and Katie is sure she’ll have a knot the size of a closed fist in her shoulder the next day, but the grass in the Quad is cool against her flushed skin and the sky is beautifully clear. It’s been a while since the last time she’d had a chance to just enjoy the night sky, no calculations or theoretical astrophysics to speak of. It’s nice, even if the reason she’s out in the first place is less than exciting. They’ll lay here until Lance sobers up enough to trudge back to his dorm unassisted and Katie can go right back to--

“We broke up. Well...I kinda walked in on ‘er with’nother guy so, yeah. Broke up or whatever. Guess I kinda’serve it anyway, been a real jerk. Bad friend. You’re mad at me, ‘sokay though. I’d b’mad at me too.” Katie doesn’t want to talk about it, not like this anyway, so she lets Lance continue mumbling to himself. “Tha’sa..that one, K--Pidge? You’re good with space ‘n star stuff, wha’sat one again? Lion’s belt or somethin’?”

“It’s Orion’s Belt, you dolt. Lions don’t wear belts.”

“Tha’s true. They don’ven have pants!”

He continues mumbling slurred nonsense to himself that Katie can’t even pretend she’s able to decipher, so she just tunes Lance out until he wears himself down. It’s the crinkling of the water bottle that shakes her from the daze she’d been in. How long had they been lying there? What time was it? _Had someone eaten all of Hunk’s mac ‘n cheese_?

“--anyway, ‘s been a while since you yelled at me, still think about it though. Sorry for fucking everything up. Everything with Nyma too, must just be some..undateable loser..somethin’.”

Katie feels the knot in her chest twist tighter.

“That’s not true, you idiot. Nyma hooked up with some other guy, and that sucks a lot but it’s not your fault. Even if it were, we can be undateable losers together and have ten times more fun than she’ll have in her whole designer brand name life. We’ll stick it to her real good.”

“Sounds nice...don’t really think not trying to date counts as undateable though. Sure plenty of guys’d ask you out if y’were interested. I would.”

Something seizes in Katie’s chest and she wants nothing more than to beat it back with a stick, to mercilessly attack any inkling of hope that follows in its stead.

“Yeah I’m sure, Lance. You won’t even remember me helping you in the morning, let alone all the weird stuff you’ve been saying.”

“M’serious, Pidge. Think you’re like...so much cooler th’any other girl I’ve ever met. Y’just, do what you want ‘n never care s’long as it makes you happy. Rem’mber when that punk your sophomore year said girls shouldn’t have short hair? Y’cut off a huge chunk of your hair right there in class. Your hair was so _long_...short hair’s really pretty on you too but ‘s long again now ‘n still pretty.”

“I think it’s time we get you in bed, sound good? Then I can make fun of you in the morning for all of this.”

“‘S the truth though, don’afta make fun of me for it.”

The walk back to Montgomery passes significantly faster without Lance as dead weight. Both Lance and Katie are silent the entire time, and that might have actually made things even worse. When Lance is babbling she just has to focus on deflecting, but if he’s not going on about something all that she has left to do is think about what he _has_ said, drunk or not. Lance wrapping his arms around her shoulders snaps her out of her train of thought.

“Thanks for comin’ to get me.”

“You asked for me, genius.”

“I know, but y’didn’t have to. Still did. G’night, Pidge.”

Katie isn’t entirely positive _she’s_ sober when she feels Lance kiss her forehead. It’s sloppy and wet and reeking of bottom shelf vodka but those are _definitely_ his lips and Katie can feel the brick and mortar she’d built up for years starting to shift out of place. She walks back to her dorm on autopilot, mind racing a million miles a minute while stuck in place, like a stupid, love-struck hamster on a wheel. The texture on the ceiling of her room has never once been fascinating and yet there she was, staring at it like it held the greatest secrets of the universe, the floor in front of her desk might be worn in from her pacing by morning.

She recaps.

One, Lance hasn’t spoken to her in months. Granted he stopped texting when she wasn’t responding and she avoided him on campus. Ok, bad example.

Two, Lance and his stupid obsession with Nyma. He _did_ invite her along though, and you can’t fault a guy for being smitten--

Three, Lance was _drunk_ , and if there was one thing he excelled at no matter what it was being an absolute idiot. He felt guilty about how things went down between them and he was _drunk_. He wanted to apologize. That’s it.

Katie runs through the entire evening on repeat until the oddity of it all feels mundane. She rationalizes it. It’s fine, Lance was drunk and an idiot and he wanted to make up. He’d forget all the stupid things he said and then she’d get to tease him about it and everything would be fine. They’d go back to being best friends and Katie would probably put something nasty like a huge roach in Nyma’s purse when she got the chance and everything would be fine. Everything was going to be fine.

So she fell asleep.

When she finally woke up, it was to the screen of her phone lighting up under her cheek.

 

**[McLance] 8:07 am : thanks for saving my ass last night, and i know you wanted to make** **  
** **fun of me**

**[McLance] 8:07 am : but**

**[McLance] 8:09 am : after i take a little me time, maybe we could get dinner?**

**[McLance] 8:16 am : Hunk is yelling at me**

**[McLance] 8:16 am : real dinner, like a date dinner**

**[McLance] 8:20 am : or lunch?**

**[McLance] 8:28 am : or not food at all, we could do something else!**

 

**[pidgeon] 8:43 am : i like food**

**Author's Note:**

> Come holler at me on [Tumblr](https://astraldefender.tumblr.com)!!


End file.
